New Report Finally Confirms Famous Ship Found in Rhode Island

Captain Cook was one of the most famous explorers of the 18th century, perhaps even of all time. His Pacific Ocean explorations are legendary, but it was the Atlantic Ocean where his famed ship was found.

For centuries the mystery of what exactly happened to Cook's ship, the HMS Endeavor, spurred researchers into tracking its path and plotting its possible position on the ocean floor.

Now a shipwreck found in Newport Harbor seven years ago has been confirmed as that ship.

Get our free mobile app

HMS Endeavor Found in Newport Harbor

It was the fall of 2018 when wreckage found just outside of Newport Harbor first gave researchers hope that they had finally discovered the Endeavor.

READ MORE: Could a Legendary Ship From the 1700s Be in Rhode Island?

This amazing ship was the one used by Captain Cook as he sailed across the Pacific charting the coast of New Zealand and Australia's eastern coast for the very first time.

His voyages from 1768 -1771 put he and his ship squarely in the history books, but though Cook went on exploring for the next eight years until his death in 1779, the HMS Endeavor became merely a cargo ship for the British Navy and was renamed Lord Sandwich.

She ultimately ended up in Narragansett Bay during the Revolutionary War and was one of five British transport ships (along with eight other ships) to be purposely sunk off Newport's Goat Island in an attempt to block the advancing French Navy in 1778.

READ MORE: Gorgeous Gilded Age Mansion is "Most Photogenic" House in Rhode Island

Of course with 13 ships all near each other on the bottom of the bay, it took decades for the wreckage of the Endeavor to be found and identified. A search using modern technology first began in 1999 and it was 2018 before researchers first believed they had done it.

3-D images taken at site RI 2394 by the Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Museum and the Australian National Maritime Museum showed the long-lost bones of a ship covered in silt. These images were painstakingly compared to historical plans of the Endeavor using detailed measurements and distinct features.

Now after 25 years of hunting and researching, project officials have finally released the report saying they positively identify the wreckage as the Endeavor and add that the "shipwreck site requires securing the highest possible level of legislative and physical protection."

Mystery solved!